Now that you know what it feels like to be us, we're starting to realise what it feels like to be you.

Australians, historically unable to separate national self-esteem from prowess at competitive sports, have suddenly found other grounds for pride. As our cricket team was put out of its misery this week, Sydney psychiatrist and author Tanveer Ahmed pointed to our "11 Nobel prize winners, the cochlear implant, Google Maps and internet Wi-Fi", not forgetting our economy and currency that are, in the local patois, crapping all over yours. (Of all the Barmy Army's songs, most noticeable is the deleted one: "We're fat, we're loud, three dollars to the pound.")

It may be hard to credit, but there is a plurality of acceptance in Australia about the Ashes defeat, as there has been in recent years about our decline in tennis, Olympic sports and the rugby codes. Only in Australian Rules, which the historian Manning Clark once called "the ballet of the working class", do we still rule (take that, Ireland!)

Have we outgrown not only the narrowly Anglo-Australian pacifier of Ashes cricket, but our reliance on sport itself? There would be something epochal in it if so. Australians, a materialist people, have loved sport because it's based on numbers. Now our chest-thumping goes to other numbers: our 3% GDP growth, our US101-cent dollar, our squillion-dollar mining companies.

Something is changing in the Australian physiology, and it is a growth in what might be called vigorous pastimes. The fastest growing sports in Australia are running, cycling and gym – for exercise, not competition – recreational surfing, snowboarding, mountain-climbing and skateboarding. Men are not deserting their families on Saturdays to play cricket; rather they are taking them on walks, swims and rides. Traditional team sports, in terms of popularity and participation, are flatlining.

But humility, from us, is hard to trust. Vince Lombardi was an American, but he might have been referring to Australians when he said, "Show me a good loser and I'll show you a loser." We're not really good losers. Not for long, anyway.